No Change*

The results of the New Hampshire primary, if they

can be believed, are a blow to those hoping for a return to sanity and reason. Clinton, a consumate corporatists who hasn't seen a war or a war crime she doesn't like and shakes her fist at Iran everytime the Israeli lobby pulls her chain, is Bush in a skirt.
McCain is as mad as a hatter, just like the man whose job he wants. We may as well elect a baby as elect McCain. It would be more entertaining and a lot less dangerous.

Electing either of them to a muscular presidency, awash in power stolen from the legislature and you and I, is national suicide.
But hold on. I said IF the results can be believed. Clinton was trailing by 10 points in the polls before the primary. It is simply unheard of to overcome a handicap like that unless you are Chuck Hagel and own the machines that counted the vote. There is reason to question these returns according to Bev Harris of Black Box voting. Here's the scoop.
It has a familiar ring. The name Diebold rears its ugly head as the builder of the opitcal scanning machines used to tally the New Hampshire vote. They use same model that was hacked in a demonstration in Leon County Florida who no longer permit their use.
One man, a private contractor named John Silvestro is the chain of custody. He has access to every memory card in the state as well as the chips inside the machines. Silvestro claims the security issues that plagued Florida have been dealt with. He argues that they not as easy to hack as everyone believes. His fix is to hire not very smart programmers. I kid you not.
Blackbox purchased a Diebold scanner and took it to a repair shop. The technician found the weaknesses in the system within minutes.
For a Party that's been victimized by partisan election contractors the Democrats have been very slow to address gapinholes in the voting system.
Since being marginalized by rigged elections, the Democrats have become adept at imitating the rhetoric off the right. Are they now aping the right wing's talent for election fraud as well? Time will tell. The Democrats are no where near as good at fraud as the GOP. They always get caught.
Check back with http://blackboxvoting.org/ for the latest. http://www.bradblog.com/ also does a great job of covering election news. Don't expect the corporate media to give you the straight scoop. They profit from tainted elections and are only too happy to pimp for power. The last thing they want is anyone talking nasty about the politicians they've bought and paid for.

*Thanks to the caller on Mike Malloy's show this evening for the inspiration.

Carol DW

A Murder of Crows

The way that America houses people has created more than an economic bubble, it has it has created a crisis for the urban and suburban wildlife that depend on native plants and a healthy ecosystem for sustainance.

The SOP for developers here (Kirkland WA) is to scrape the nutrient poor glaciel till into to little landing pads for oversized homes that peer into their neighbors bathrooms and dining rooms.
There are supposed to be restrictions on tree removal but I have yet to see them enforced. The mandate that requires developers to preserve 25% of "heritage trees" is more than esthetic. It rains in the Pacific Northwest and trees suck up soil moisture, preventing flooding and help to pin down the thin, acidic soils.

The development next door is symptomatic of the greed and ignorance that drives business today. The land once held a healthy grove of fir and cedar that housed a crow rookery among other things. Walking into the grove in spring would excite the rath of crow parents and send them noisily circling above your head. It was lively, interesting and comforting to know that they could thrive without any help from us
Besides controlling runoff, the trees absorbed pollutents from a nearby freeway and provided solace to the soul.

The land was originally a homestead and was occupied by generations of the same family. Many generations of people and many generations of crows grew together on this land.

All but three of the trees in the little forest were murdered. Others were in the way of a "house footprint". Still more succumbed when workers ran heavy machinery over their root systems, damaging them beyond recovery. The crows vanished.

Now the crows are back with a vengence; dozens and dozens of them. They fly in every afternoon to forage in the wheat straw the builders have spread on the raw earth to help absorb the run off and keep the "weeds" (wild flowers and berries) from returning. Because they are intelligent birds, they play.

These crows are not pokey little blackbirds, they are formidable. They are the jumbo sized, raucous birds of the Pacific Northwest. Perhaps they are just grabbing a quick snack, exploiting all the food sources in their increasingly restricted environment. Perhaps there is no real significance to their return, but I don't think so.

I like to think they are re-asserting their ownership of the land. They are reminding us that there are higher laws than the laws of profit and ownership. That when push comes to shove, natural law trumps everything.

I look forward to see them perched amid the spindly, nursery grown cherry blossoms this spring like an omen. I like to think about them crowing and crapping while the realtors try and separate their clients from obscene amounts of money in exchange for their shoddy merchandise. I look forward to their daily return like an uncomfortable thought to a troubled conscience.

Carol DW

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

It's close to the winter solstice now and the days are disappointingly short. The air is chill and here in the Northwest we tend hibernate like grouchy old bears. It's a good time to think about the summer past and recall the warmth of the sun.

It seems like only yesterday that I took an airplaine to the "State of Enchantment" drove three hundred miles to an undisclosed location, stuggled up huge rock formation and watched the an almost full moon rise over the the canyons.

We were perched on a pinnacle that was part of a rock ridge that stretched for 100 miles between Utah and Arizona. The ribs of the earth.

On one side of this rocky throne, the sun was sinking slowly, painting the sky and land with lurid, unimaginable color. At the same moment and directly opposite, a pale moon began floating up through the pastel colors of the reflected sunset.

The company was more than congenial. The wine and the food tasted marvelous after the climb. Nothing moved on the land to disturb our homage to the dying day. The silence was palpable.

Such silence that is unknown in an urban landscape. It is a deeply moving experience. Even the wind stopped. If you listened carefully, you could hear the earth breath.

It was an eternal moment, unsurpassed in its beauty and simplicity.
Carol DW

Time Out

During the past two months the deterioration of America has accelerated alarmingly. It's
It's almost impossible to keep up. It seems a dark cloud has settled permanently over the land.
The stock market is tanking, the dollar is in the toilet, the booming housing market is going bust, people are losing their homes in record numbers and the lending industry is on life support.
There is blowback from imperialistic meddling in Pakistan and Afghanistan and ongoing genocide the Palestinian terrorities, Darfur and Iraq. Cheney, the cowardly draft dodger is tampering with intelligence again and shaking his arthritic fist at Iran; a country that hasn't attacked anyone in 250 years. There just isn't much good news.
Most alarming are the increasingly bold incursions into into Constitutionally protected areas of American life. Americans are now in the unenviable position of being in danger from their own government.
Naomi Wolf's timely new book "The End of America" is guaranteed to send chills down your spine. The parallels between Germany's descent into facism and what is happening right here, right now, are unmistakeable. In the last week, I have heard two legislators express fear and concern over the state of the state.
Rather than oppose the unthinkable, the alleged opposition political Party are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. There is no end in sight.
As Charlie Reese aptly commented, the presidential candidates seem to be unapologetically running for dictator.
All the traditional ways that Americans have been able to exercise power have proven ineffective. The arrogance of our elected representatives is palpable. What seems to be left is civil disobedience, open rebellion or acquiescence.
It isn't a pretty picture.
Time to take a step back and rethink the duties of citizenship.
Carol DW

Tell Your Children What?

I almost fell off the sofa last evening when my television advised me to tell my children not to have sex before marriage. The sixties never happened?
I assume I was not the only one who found this offensive. What I tell my children is none of the goverment's damn business. IF I wanted advice, the pervs, cheats and liars who made this message possible would be my last choice.
Their inability to make a satisfactory adjustment to adult sexuality has been plastered all over the media for the last seven years. What was Jeff Gannon doing at the White House on all those late night visits? From chatting up underage pages to soliciting in the mens room, the penis police (or should that be vagina police?)should be in therapy, not handing out bad advice.
If this intrusive messaging is aimed at decreasing teen pregnancy and STDs, the goal post is in the other direction. Sex education and available birth control is much more effective. Does anyone believe that the hard drinking twins whose parents are in the White House are virgins or their husbands to be?
Instead of using scarce tax dollars to stick their long noses in our private business, the Bushies should be spending the money on making sure that all the kids they pretend to care about have decent health care.
Carol DW

Pigs and Motorcycles

It was a "piggie" thing to do to invade Iraq and steal their oil. It's far worse to call mass murder a "surge" and to discuss whether or not it's "working". It made the man on the motorcyle really mad. He knocked that pig down.
It should make Americans really mad that bush and cheney are trying to santize their crimes by changing the words. Mad enough to take action.
Paul Craig Roberts has some words for the Bush administration.
He calls them "the greatest combinaton of idiocy and evil in human history". They are planning "another illegal attack on a Muslim country without assessing the consequences.....Before they fall they will bring more sorrow to the world and more shame to America".
Carol DW

Inslee Responds

My post on Jay Inslee's whereabouts found its way to a popular
impeachment website, "After Downing Street".
The comments indicated that Inslee's constituents are none too happy with his performance.
Quick as wink I received an email from Patrick Hogan, Inslee's Special Assistant, complaining that I said Inslee wasn't having anymore town meetings. He must have been pretty excited because if he'd calmed down and read the article, he would have noticed that I said "he was home for a month and his office said there were no plans".
Well, now there are.
Mr. Hogan promised that sometime and somewhere in September, there will be a town meeting. He apologized for the 'miscommunication".
Hmmm. I don't think there was any miscommunication. Inslee wasn't planning any meetings and now he is. Responding to the concerns of your constituents is good thing. No need to hide it with a lot of beltway mumbo jumbo..
He didn't give a position on any of the issues I was unhappy about. That would have been nice.
It reminds me of the guy who was accused of murdering a man and a dog. He claims he's innocent and to prove it he produces the dog.
Come on, Jay.
Dump the Gonzales distraction and sign on to HRes 333. Dumping Dirty Dick will save a lot of lives. Impeaching Gonzales won't change a thing. The terrible twosome in the White House will just nominate someone worse.
Since you brought up the subject of impeachment, why not draw up articles of impeachment against the criminal and chief? Letting him get away with murder is a bad example for the children.
Carol DW